Every artistic quest begins with an obsession that forces the eye to return, endlessly, to skirt the same shore. For me, this point of focus was the prominence of the motif: this need to work tirelessly around the same patterns, the same spaces, until the subject wears thin and slips gently toward abstraction. For nearly forty years, I walked to meet the trees, those sentinels of the landscape, seeking to set them in dialogue with the horizon. This body of work took shape on its own, almost without my knowing, to the rhythm of repeated steps and familiar encounters, much like photographing friends or members of one's own family. In truth, this tireless journey across the world had but a single purpose: to seek out "friend-trees," to return and greet those to whom I had grown attached, and to capture their portrait once more to honor their silent presence.

At the end of this Palm Tree's Pavane, what remains? Stripped-down, silent images, bathed in an ethereal poetry. The black and white did not merely capture forms; it staged isolated silhouettes whose expressive impact draws you in. The lone motif, especially when it is a palm tree, always possesses something primeval, painful, and timeless. Alone in the midst of space, this motif sings only of absence and near silence. Yet in this graphic nudity, it succeeds in structuring space and making the world more desirable.

By choosing black and white for this pavane, my intention was to pursue this aesthetic, intellectual, and sensitive dialogue. Photography lends the tree multiple symbols: resilience, solitude, mysticism, or the environmental struggle. Yet beyond the symbol, the tree is a revealer. It can manifest the personality of the one who beholds it and convey their own perception of the world.

Every palm tree photographed here is an invitation to imitate its gesture: to lift one's head and catch a glimpse, beyond the clouds, of that vast, constant, and ever-clear sky. By restoring this essential coherence between below and above, between our earthly roots and our celestial aspirations, the pavane draws to a close. The future resides entirely in this simple act: casting our gaze toward the canopy, the better to guide our steps today.